It was a joke. Ten minutes late to launch,followed by half an hour of timing out, lock ups, one almost complete payment process, and it now looks like no Nexus 4 for me today or in the foreseeable future. And to add insult to injury, I've just got my email from Google notifying me it's available for sale :/
Brits swallow Google Nexus 4 supply 'in 30 minutes'
Google's Nexus 4 is said to have been snapped up within 30 minutes of its UK release this morning. Getting hold of a Glastonbury ticket would have been easier, apparently. The handset's affordable price obviously had masses eager with the Visa, ready to splash either £239 for an 8GB or £279 for a 16GB version. Google's Play …
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 16:47 GMT AlbertH
It was a joke. Ten minutes late to launch,followed by half an hour of timing out, lock ups, one almost complete payment process, and it now looks like no Nexus 4 for me today or in the foreseeable future. And to add insult to injury, I've just got my email from Google notifying me it's available for sale :/
So what do you expect when you use Internet Explorer?
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 18:10 GMT Version 1.0
US version
The US site started offering the phones about 10 minutes before 11am PST ... but kept going up and down like a yo-yo ... after a couple of minutes I managed to get a couple of 8Mb phones into the cart and click "pay" but after that nothing ...
It's back to "coming soon" again ... and I shaved my ***** for this?
-
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 11:34 GMT ContentsMayVary
Nexus 10 32GB is out of stock too, after one hour. 16 GB is still available at the time of writing.
I managed to snaffle a 32GB one - after accidentally ordering 2 due to horrible Play store timeouts and so on. I cancelled the extra one - perhaps I should have kept it for ebay and $$$ profit... ;)
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 11:39 GMT ajmatthews
Nexus 4
Well, as has been commented on elsewhere on the internet. The sale of the Nexus 4 didn't go that well. i started trying to buy one at 8:10 and the checkout process either crashsed with an ambiguous error and you had to start again, or Google wallet failed miserably. Stock would fluctuate between being in stock and coming soon. Gave up at 8:45 as had better things to do.
Didn't manage to bag one - but will try again in a few weeks time.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 11:40 GMT Richard Johnson 1
I've accidentally ordered 3 - it was not clear at all that payments had gone through or been accepted etc.
I have no idea whether all three will be honoured. If I were Google I would cancel two of my orders and just ship me one, but if three turn up I doubt I'll have a problem finding people to sell them to. (Not at a profit, I hasten to add, before get flamed!)
Artificial limiting of supply is incredibly frustrating, but you can see why they do it. What's not really acceptable is giving people such a poor shopping experience with page crashes etc. Of all the companies in the world, I didn't think Google would be struggling to provide a web service!
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 11:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
What proof of Artificial limiting of supply?
Because the writer of this author said so?
Rumour is, they told 30k units in the UK this morning in 30 minutes. 1000 a minute....
And looking at the number of G+1's on the page, It's likely it's true.
Not all companies play the same games as Apple and Nintendo....
-
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 15:43 GMT Mark .
Re: What proof of Artificial limiting of supply?
Why compare to Apple? The best selling single model is the S3 - which would also be a better comparison due to also being android. Comparing sales of 1 android phone out of thousands, to all of Apple's sales, is hardly fair. Btw, Apple phone sales are a piss in the ocean compared to Samsung (or even Nokia), and especially compared to android.
-
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 11:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What proof of Artificial limiting of supply?
Same games as Apple? Honestly 30k units is just a joke of an allocation - one Apple store probably sold that many iPhones over the first weekend. At 30k they wanted it to appear sold out - don't be surprised if loads more appear in the next day or so.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 12:24 GMT Shagbag
30K is HUGE.
30,000 units is an AMAZING figure. It's 'probably' more than 3 times the iPhone 5's first day sales (Apple only say what they want you to hear - including their sales figures).
This is 'probably' the MOST AWESOME sales debut ever.
It'll 'probably' set a GUINESS WORLD RECORD.
They'll 'probably' have them on the ISS with the next Dragon delivery.
The space crew will 'probably' use them to phone their wives (or boyfriends).
Somewhere, someone will 'probably' drop it down the shitter.
And they'll 'probably' fish it out with their bare hands.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 14:14 GMT Peter H. Coffin
Re: What proof of Artificial limiting of supply?
30k phones at one Apple Store? Hardly. Pretend a box with a phone in is is 15cm x 10 x 5. stack phone retail boxes in cases, probably 30 per box. 12 cases per row on a pallet, probably no more than 5 rows high. That's 1500 phones per pallet, roughly. You can NOT convince me that a typical Apple Store has stock space to store 20 pallets. They MIGHT be able to handle 2. They wouldn't be able to run credit cards and offer overpriced service contracts fast enough to get 3000 phones out the door in 12 hours.
-
-
-
-
-
Wednesday 14th November 2012 06:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: In the meantime.
iOS doesn't work - what you smoking - seen plenty of iPads being installed in vertical markets / corporate etc.
MS are very late to this party - iOS already had the majority of the tablet market and probably even higher with business / corporates. What next - RIM are about to wipe all the other platforms out?
-
-
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 13:00 GMT EyeCU
It's called competition
It drives companies to out perform each other and so Samsung will just have to put more effort into their next handset if they want to remain market leader. Contrast that with the Apple way of doing things which is to try and remove the competition with lawyers as they cannot compete on technical merit.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 15:34 GMT Charlie Clark
Re: It's called competition
Indeed, though as Samsung is supplying the presumably higher margin Nexus 10 they are unlikely to worry too much. Anyway Samsung has announced the Galaxy Premier as a slightly cut-down version of the SIII.
@ Mr Cox - as desirable as "sold out" notices are for PR, most companies like to be able to keep on selling. Engineering shortages is against the law. The most likely thing is that Google still doesn't really know much about selling physical products: shipping, warehousing, etc. an may well have been genuinely caught out by the demand which does imply what many have been saying for a while: good Android devices are considered to be as good as I-Phones.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 17:07 GMT Mark .
Re: It's called competition
"an may well have been genuinely caught out by the demand which does imply what many have been saying for a while: good Android devices are considered to be as good as I-Phones."
Android has massively outsold iphone for years (as did Symbian throughout its lifetime), so indeed, it's long been true that most people consider them better.
-
Wednesday 14th November 2012 09:48 GMT SuccessCase
Re: It's called competition
Actually Mark the evidence is against your assertion. Volume of sales does not equate to a vote for which is better and I don't even need to provide examples of an assertion so obvious as that. Not that reason will make any difference to the response this gets :)
Two metrics that do provide a fair basis of comparison are satisfaction ratings and resale value. iPhones come our in front of any Android phones on both counts for sure - though for the first time for iPhone, since the Maps debacle, satisfaction ratings have fallen. However they still remain higher than for e.g. the S3 by some margin. This new Nexus may of course change that, but it is fair enough to point this out because your statement is referring to Android devices to date.
Additionally there seems to be evidence Android phones - outside of a tech clique (which are only a tiny proportion of sales beyond first day) - are not purchased by people who are really that into using smartphones. Data usage by iPhones is still proportionately much higher per user than is the case for Android (despite some initial reports in 2010 to the contrary) and pundits for some time have had difficulty understanding why that should be, but one interpretation is difficult to avoid; Android phones, perceived as the cheaper alternative by the general market, are purchased by a higher proportion of people who don't want to be left behind but who aren't particularly into smartphones or don't wish to allocate budget to purchasing an iPhone. Consequently they are used for core phone functions and maybe for camera and music, more than for web browsing and a wide range of apps (which is also backed up by the still far lower revenues and profit margins for apps developers on Android).
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/21/real-time-research-ios-dominates-over-android-when-it-comes-to-usage-says-chitika/
http://www.androidauthority.com/iphone-owners-use-more-data-129207/
None of this changes how an individual might feel about an operating system, so it is is still perfectly consistent to say for those who are really "in the know" Android is better. However let's get some perspective as this forum is descending into a circle every bit as jerky as any formed by Apple fanboys.
-
-
-
-
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 11:54 GMT Robigus
Keep a 10 year old handy
I had a look and they weren't released. As I stood up and moved away from the kitchen computer, my youngest slipped into the seat and was watching the page and refreshing. He nearly exploded with excitement when it changed within seconds (and nearly went hypo but that's another story). Managed to bag a 16GB as a surprise for wifey - his excitement blew the surprise out of the water though.
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 12:13 GMT Andrew Jones 2
I'm far too cynical to believe that
a) they had massive stock which has all sold out and
b) their servers were having trouble keeping up.
Quite how any company famed for it's server infrastructure and ability to cope with a trillion web requests every 0.001 seconds (these aren't official figures) can fail to keep a simple shop running is beyond me. Quite how the stock level can manage to vary between "in stock" and "coming soon" within seconds is beyond me.
The only logical reason I can come up with for a company not accepting pre-orders is so they have the ability to peddle the Apple line "we underestimated the demand for our new product" - The sheer fact every tech blog for the last 2 months has been running at least one article on the Nexus4 pretty much every day - blows the "we didn't expect this kind of demand" theory out of the water.
Sorry - the whole thing smacks of Apple tactics (which I'm surprised haven't been patented)
And yes - I am bitter - I spent 25 minutes trying to get one - I had one in my cart about 10 times - but I just couldn't progress to the paying for it stage "oops an error occurred" - and then an empty shopping cart (which wasn't really empty - as soon as you tried to add the Nexus4 back to it - you discovered - Oh now there are 2 in there....)
-
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 16:42 GMT Mark .
You're right that the difference is one of scale. Android is now well over 1 million a day, all year round, now 5 times that of iphone. Samsung android phones alone outsell them two to one. And in total sales, both Samsung and Nokia outsell Apple. That's what the scale is. I entirely and that "sold out" sales mean little, as far as the real total sales are concerned.
-
-
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 12:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Farcical
Decided to sell my iPhone 4S to get the Nexus 4 and I waited and waited and waited. Couldn't get any further than adding the phone to the basket in Google Chrome but then it kept producing an error
Worked like a charm in Internet Explorer and launched the google wallet screen, which kept producing an error or loading a screen with no billing details or information at all.
After several attempts it then told me it was out of stock. I used a link I'd copied and it was back in my basket. Managed to proceed to the checkout only to be told at the final stage after submission there was another error. Checked my bank account and they've taken the money for two phones instead of one.
I believe I have successfully managed to cancel one of the orders and that the other one is being dispatched, but I'll be buggered if I know how I ended up with 2 separate purchases when I only got as far as the billing information screen once.
Can't wait to get my hands on it though great spec'd phone and it's got pure Android which is leaps and bounds ahead of iOS now. Too many great features that iOS lacks without resorting to a jailbreak to resist switching
-
-
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 15:51 GMT Frumious Bandersnatch
Re: How much better...
It's good, but, not as good as an iPhone.
I'm reminded of that ad that Apple ran not so long ago that bigged up Siri in particular. One female user asked the phone whether her brother had arrived yet at a stadium or something, and was told that [insert Brother's name] was here. And you talk about how Android phones spy on you?
-
-
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 12:38 GMT Esskay
Managed to snag a 16GB one here in Oz
But a lot of unhappy people missed out.
As far as I can tell, they went on sale at 11:20am local (sydney) time, I ordered at 12:30pm and the 16GB models were gone before 1pm. 8GB models lasted a bit longer, but not by much.
It's not the perfect phone, but the price makes it an absolute steal (plus vanilla android's quick updates means an always up-to-date phone).
From what I've heard worldwide stocks were *very* limited (which would explain the lack of preorders), possibly as a sweetener for their partners (who obviously make competing phones) also the fact that the phone must be being sold at something approaching a loss means that they're probably not sacrificing production of profitable models in order to get the Nexus out the door. Ultimately Google aren't a hardware company, hitting record sales numbers on day 1 isn't exactly something they need to keep their share price up, so they're probably happy to keep them trickling out at a constant rate and getting them out there when they do. Historically Nexus phones aren't volume sellers the way the SGS3 is, the popularity in the wake of SGS3, iPhone5, Optimus G, Lumia 920 probably comes as something of a shock to even Google.
-
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 12:52 GMT Waspy
Oh and what's this?
A load of predictable opportunists selling Nexus 4s on eBay from this morning.
I'm all for capitalism and that, but I witnessed the same thing when I was trying to get a firesale TouchPad last year - after a whole night of trying and failing to buy even one TP online, I went into my local PC World and was flanked by two others, a lady who didn't even know what the fuck a TouchPad was (her mate had told her 'it's a bit like an iPad but really cheap') and some other bonehead and his mate who was trying to explain to the lady 'yeah, it's like an iPad innit but not as good. But it's cheap!'. Meanwhile there was me, Palm Pre owner since launch merely seeing the opportunity to own a tablet that I'd wanted (but couldn't afford) since its release. Never got one in the end.
The point of my rambling is that it must be quite annoying for people who genuinely want a Nexus 4 for their own personal use versus people trying to make a quick buck, who in my eye are no better than ticket touts.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 13:18 GMT David Neil
Re: Oh and what's this?
Captialism, it's great. If someone is prepared to give me their money just now rather than hang on a couple of weeks, why not take the money?
Same with the Touchpad, I had no interest at the apple-esque prices initially charged, but when Argos accepted reservations in the firesale I got myself one and eventually slapped Android on it.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 13:00 GMT Jon Gibbins
30 minutes? More like 13!
I received the email and in no less than 13 minutes I was on the site ready to order and already the N4 was 'coming soon' again ....
Couldn't help but notice that O2 are profiteering on it too. £400? C'mon Google. Get a grip and get some more stock before I buy an HTC or Sammy or something ...
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 13:00 GMT Graham Lee
"Company claims to have sold an unspecified number of things"
> There's clearly a pattern emerging from tech launches these days: announce the launch date and, on the day, sit back and await the 'sold out immediately' headlines.
On the one hand, you could put your money where your principles are and refuse to publish such non-news. On the other hand, if forum posts are a useful proxy for page views, you made quite a few ad dollars yourselves out of this "story".
I imagine companies don't tell you what the numbers are because they're uninspiringly low numbers. "We sold all of the 3000 UK Nexus 4s (which excludes the ones we'd already sold to carriers)" is less compelling.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 13:23 GMT Carl Fletcher
It's embarrassing!
It's damn embarrassing that a company like Google can continuously fail to anticipate demand and launch products to immediate sellout. We've had 3 other Nexus phones already, they know how many are going to be needed.
The website didn't work either, slow and errored, and several people i know ordered several accidentally because they didn't get any confirmation that the order succeeded. This is *Google*! They can't build a website that scales??
I did bag one though.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 17:02 GMT Mark .
Re: It's embarrassing!
"We've had 3 other Nexus phones already, they know how many are going to be needed."
The previous Nexus phones didn't sell that hugely - they were important, as flagships, but the massive Android sales tended to come from other phones (with the biggest sales most recently being the S2 and S3).
On top of that, most phone sales AFAICT come through contracts, not from people buying the phone outright.
So it's quite possibly they did genuinely fail to anticipate demand, because it is so much stronger than anything they've had before.
-
This post has been deleted by its author
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 14:36 GMT Richy Freeway
Thought I'd failed at ordering completely.
Spent most of the morning trying to get one, the site failed and failed and failed and then the stock was gone and I was fuming.
20 minutes later I get 2 emails telling me that I've ordered the phone. 2 separate orders had gone through.
Didn't really think to buy both and stick one on ebay, so the 2nd one got cancelled.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 14:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Taxation of Multinational Corporations
Love the new OS but can't help feeling a bit disappointed now from what I learnt yesterday of google uk business structure at the UK Parliament Select Committee Hearing..
Watch the following video from the 17:00 (actual clock time) how google stashes its European profits in Bermuda :)
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=11764
Can someone enlighten how they are able to take it out of Bermuda again?
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 14:44 GMT peejay1977
Have to say this was quite farcical, I expected the website to be slow, even crash, but I did not expect it to let me get all the way to paying for it then crash and tell me my basket was empty.
However, an hour later and I find 2 emails stating I have bought 2 of them! All is not lost, a friend wants the spare one.
Not a great show Google!
Paul.
-
Tuesday 13th November 2012 18:20 GMT James Hughes 1
When I think of the abuse
That I had to deal with when fielding the Raspberry Pi complainers after their launch (and even now!), it makes my heart glad to see Google, with all their muscle and cash, had exactly the same problems. And if it really was only 30k units ( I don't believe that btw), the Raspberry Pi's >100k looks, well, quite something.
Raspberry Pi on course to sell 900k by end of year, 1 million (ish) in first year of sale. Just thought I'd mention it.
-
Wednesday 14th November 2012 02:39 GMT AlexS
Bagged a Nexus 10 at 10am, yes 10am. Nexus 4 I had one in the cart and had my card declined, phoned up card company and sorted it. By then it was too late. Nexus 4 were being sold until 9.30am, but you had to press refresh about 100 times and then it was near impossible to bag (somebody was always there first).
Those who got confused about whether they made an order to not need to log in here to check:
http://www.google.co.uk/wallet/
-
Wednesday 14th November 2012 04:42 GMT Zed Zee
The conspiracy to dictate device storage continues.
It's amazing how the processor is dropped into this article with a complete vacuum, when it comes to it's specification; that being quad core at 1.5GHz.
What's of more concern and smacks of a conspiracy by all the Android phone vendors, is that they've now started dropping the feature of an SD Card slot from their phones!
Sony is at it with the NXT models, Google is now doing it on Nexus 7 and this unimpressive phone and I think hTC has started down this disappointing behaviour as well, with the Desire X.
I don't want my storage capacity dictated to me (as Apple fanboys have to endure) - I want to decide how much capacity I want and I certainly don't want to blow my monthly data allowance, on streaming all my content, just because my phone hasn't got a SD Card slot.
-
Wednesday 14th November 2012 09:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Trading Standards Fail
Quite apart from the fact that, as has already been commented, one of the world's biggest net/data businesses can't keep its trading/payments system running, this accidental multiple-order thing is a disgrace.
Perhaps everyone here who has "accidentally" bought several does actually have the funds to settle their credit-card bill. Perhaps they are also set up as e-bay traders and can quickly off-load, and even profit from, extras. Perhaps not. How many people, today, who could just afford the phone, are now worried by an additional couple of hundred quid, or more, on their credit card balance?
"Oh sorry, I accidentally sold you several. And took the money. Thanks: you're the umpteenth today."
...Wouldn't this get a high-street trader closed down?
-
Wednesday 14th November 2012 10:15 GMT jowlymonster
I'm still using my trust Galaxy Nexus - the Nexus 4 looks ok, but not significant enough for me to really want one. So luckily, I didn't have to get all pissy yesterday when it all went wrong. I know a couple of guys from work tried to buy one and failed miserably though.
I might pick one up in a few months, but the G'Nex is the first phone I've had for 12 months and not got bored of yet!